SE: Can you describe the basic process of translating manga from Japanese to English? It seems there would be some important things to watch, especially regarding direct, word-for-word translations.
HK: Direct, word-for-word translations often sound dry and stilted. This is something that's true when you're translating manga or anime. After having a thorough and extensive understanding of the source language, probably I'd say that the next most important thing for a translator to have is a good ear for colloquialisms. If it's funny in the Japanese, for example, it has to be funny in the English, too, and even though it's also the job of the rewriter to make sure that humor comes through, if the comedy of the original isn't translated properly for the rewriter, the rewriter has no place to start. In other words, my job as a translator is to make sure the rewriter has a good, solid script with which to work.
SE: What can you say about your work on Katsura's Shadow Lady? I understand that you a chance to speak to him a couple of years back at his first US appearance at an anime and manga convention.
HK: Unfortunately, my opportunities to speak with Mr. Katsura at that convention were limited, but from the time I did get to spend with him, I was able to get some insight into the man as an artist. Katsura, apparently, is a big fan of Batman . . . I'm talking a really, REALLY big fan. True, from time to time, it's possible to note various Batman-like characters appearing in his work, but an even greater aspect of his enthusiasm comes through when you learn that he spends a great deal of his free time modeling Batman busts out of clay. He also buys "anything he can get his hands on" when it comes to Dark Knight merchandise. "Shadow Lady," according to Katsura, is set in the world it is as a direct result of his passion for Batman's Gotham City. In Shadow Lady's costumes, there are other Batman homages, as well.
SE: How would you describe Katsura's work to someone who's never read it?
HK: I'd say that he's an artist whose style is very clean, and that his art has a style all its own. Just like in the U.S., the most popular artists in the field invariably have their imitators (in Japan, the Rumiko Takahashi style is one that's frequently copied by young and upcoming artists), but Katsura's work is distinctly his own. You can always tell a Katsura manga, for example, from the cleanness of its lines, and from the detail. This is especially true of his female characters, which as all his fans know, have always been his strong point. (One anecdote circulated among his fans in Japan is that the face is the first thing that gives Katsura as an artist away . . . that, and the amount of detail he puts into rendering their derrieres.)
As for recent storylines in Katsura's work, there seems to be a strong prevalence of love stories, many of which additionally have a sci-fi or fantasy twist. In the U.S., Katsura is most well-known to fans as the creator of Video Girl Ai and DNA2; as of this writing, neither anime series is available on home video. This speaks well of his popularity, I think, since many Japanese artists become known to U.S. fans chiefly through the domestic release of their manga-based anime titles. Most recently, his newest title -- currently available in Japan only -- is called I's. Again, it's a love story. It doesn't have the fantasy twist in it that Shadow Lady does, however.
SE: What sorts of characters does Katsura tend to create?
HK: When it comes to their characters, most manga artists tend to create attractive ones, especially when it comes to female. In this, Katsura is no different; in fact, you could argue that his girls are among the cutest being done today. Personality- wise, Katsura's characters tend to be shy or conflicted (Yota in Video Girl Ai; Kenta in Wingman; Junta in DNA2; Aimi in Shadow Lady). Traditionally, the main problem these main characters have is telling the person they're in love with their true feelings.
SE: And how does Shadow Lady compare to Katsura's other work?
HK: It's building upon themes he's established during the long course of his career, I think --- namely, gently tweaking a love story into an homage/flight of fancy with a dark "superhero" wash and then adding a twist. Even with the gothic stuff added, Shadow Lady still has Katsura written all over it.
SE: Is Katsura popular in Japan? And in general, how popular do manga artists get? Can you make any comparisons to how manga artists are perceived by the general public in Japan and the way American comic book artists are perceived here?
HK: Katsura is one of the most popular manga artists working in Japan today. As the widely cited figure goes, manga is 30% of the publishing market there, meaning a bestselling manga artist is as likely to be known to the general public as is a bestselling novelist. Comics, in Japan, are something published for everyone, with titles targeted at boys, girls, young adults, businessmen, housewives, young mothers, golfers, sports fans...you name it. As anyone who's lived there or even just visited can attest, manga are literally available on every corner. For those who are interested in reading more about manga as a cultural phenomenon, Frederik Schodt's "Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics" is still the best book out there.
SE: Why do you think female main characters are so popular in manga?
HK: There are two ways of answering this question. The first is to be flippant, and to say that there are so many female characters in manga because they're what the young boys who buy the majority of certain comics want to see. The other way to answer is to point out that, even though the U.S. is seeing more and more diversity in the way of manga titles released domestically, what we have here is by no means a fair or representative sampling of what's available over THERE.
As I've pointed out, in Japan manga is ubiquitous. The field is so broad and so diverse that it's unlikely a businessman buying his manga is going to be confronted with or even aware, sometimes, of what's selling in other markets. Similarly, housewives and young mothers who read "lady's comics" may not know that Katsura has a new title.
The fact is, just as with much of the anime that's brought over, the overwhelming bulk of titles that are chosen for domestic release are ones that would fall into the "boys" or "young men" genre. We don't see the businessmen comics; neither, by and large, do we see the comics for girls, young women, and housewives.
Therefore, because the titles we see here were originally published in Japan in magazines targeted at boys and young men, the heroes tend to be young males, the heroines to be pretty, and the adventures and storylines to be things that would be interesting to elementary-, high school-, and college-aged males. In recent years, as I've said, we've seen an increased diversity in the titles that are brought over; additionally, there are those titles which started out in Japan as "for boys only" which have built their own share of female fans here, such as Ranma 1/2, or the original Dirty Pair stories by Takachiho. The fandom here for the animated Sailor Moon -- a series DEFINITELY not aimed at boys or young men in Japan -- is another example that comes to mind.
SE: Having such great female characters certainly seems to attract female American readers to manga. Do you have any idea how much of a female readership manga like Katsura's attracts in Japan?
HK: Well, Shadow Lady (and, for that matter, most of Katsura's other works) are printed in Japan in boys' magazines, meaning that access to them by female readers is necessarily limited. This isn't to say that girls aren't aware of or even are fans of Katsura's works, but they do have to work a little harder at it than finding a series by, say, the all-female manga group CLAMP. Maybe because Katsura's series tend to be love stories, they DO attract their share of female fans -- Video Girl Ai and DNA2 are both examples of a manga series aimed at boys that are also popular with girls, partly for the romance angle, and partly for the unusual, distinctive beauty of Katsura's art.